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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Sketch Card #5 - '75 Billy Koufax

Hey, I just detected a disturbance in the force... Like... someone was calling out... Like I was being... summoned. My pony-sense is tingling! Did someone mention PURPLE PONIES?!?!

Why, it was Night Owl! Night Owl is apparently a fan o' ponies just like Captain Canuck. I'm not going to draw him a pony though because he already got this:

The concept was easy: It's Night Owl so it's gotta be a Dodger. His favorite set is '75 Topps. Lotsa pretty colors in '75 Topps. Who's the subject? Ron Cey is his favorite player but Cey already has a card in the '75 set. Hmmmm... Kershaw? Nah, let's do an old timer. Jackie? Drysdale? Let's do Koufax. Topps has a thing for him right now. Koufax rookie card on a '75 Topps design. Done.

The whole thing was drawn over three days. I did the border first, then the back, and finally got the courage to draw Sandy last. I had started messing with colored pencils at this point but I'm still too chicken to do pictures of actual people in anything other than black and white. I don't quite have a handle on color theory yet. Purple ponies, I got that. I copied Al Downing's border for the card because the world needs more pink borders on baseball cards. The yellow and pink on the border worked out ok but the blue in the Dodgers name at the top got a little dark due to mixing with the regular pencil. I'm not even gonna comment on the lettering and lines in the border. I've dug out my old ruler and triangles from High School since this drawing. Sandy himself turned out good enough, although those eyes creep me out a little. I tried really hard on those, but I got some drawing advice that basically said "there's a time to just give up and walk away" and I hit my limit with those peepers.

The back is loosely based on the Bio box and cartoon on the back of '75 Topps cards. Once again, a ruler would have been useful. I was feeling Halloweeny in October so Owlie got a FrankenCard cartoon and a whole lot of poorly lettered text further obscured by some pink crosshatching to mimic the unreadability of the original design. I think I pulled an Ed Wood though, and made it so bad it looks kinda good.

Before I started in on sketching Koufax on the actual card, I did a trial run on this sketch page. I did this one a lot more quickly then the one on the actual card and labeled it "Koufax Practice". Once I was done I labeled various parts of the drawing based on how I felt about them.
Eyes: good
Nose: Meh
Mouth: not bad
Ears: Derp.
Other commentary includes "Goddam I hate drawing caps". And I do, I am never ever happy with how a cap comes out. I also tried to figure out how Sandy's head was shaped which was useful in drawing the final product. Overall, I think this was a help as I probably improved on everything in the final product. Except the eyes. There's just something freaky about Sandy's eyes on the actual card that I can't quite figure out.

Koufax was probably the fourth or fifth thing drawn on that sketch page. I started out with a trial run of the "Twilight Starlin" sketch card up in the top left. That monstrosity above Koufax is me getting stuck on what to draw and scribbling out Pinkie Pie in an unconscious homage to Finland's Coat of Arms. (without the sword, Pinkie's a pacifist) Thank Humon comics for putting that idea in my head. Twilight Sparkle is appropriately horrified and above her is a test run for the Frankenstein on the back incorporated into an equation I'm puzzling over. That's for another post though. Down below is a self portrait of me going off the rails again. This happens more often than I'd like to admit. The last thing drawn to fill up the page was a two minute sketch of Richard Nixon off an Upper deck insert card. It probably took slightly longer than two minutes, but certainly didn't go over three. I don't know why I think drawing fast is a particularly useful skill but hey, it's fun. I also don't know why I enjoy drawing ponies and old wrinkly dudes, but... um, there's probably some deep psychological issues there. Best not to talk about it. Hey, here's some Billy Madison to serve as a distraction!

Dayf the Blogger has a Posse

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Note on the Blogroll

If you have a blog, and it ain't on here, LET ME KNOW! There are a lot of good blogs I'm missing out on. I'm also very forgetful and sometimes forget to put it on the list even if I do find a good one. If your blog is about cards or trading or sports in general I'll fit it in, but don't try to sneak your blog about politics or cats or crop rotation in the 14th century on here.